


we sure know how to run free

by defcontwo



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason, Cass and early Saturday morning grocery shopping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we sure know how to run free

It's just past 9:36 AM on a shivering cold Saturday morning and Jason hasn't slept in over twenty-four hours. He's exhausted but wired, jumped up on caffeine and a fight, and the 5 o'clock shadow covering his face is well on its way to becoming a full-time beard. 

But the hell of it is, he came home from a long, hard night of patrol to find that somehow, in the past few weeks of running from one end of the city to another, chasing down leads and knocking in heads, he'd forgotten to go grocery shopping. All he had in his tiny, cramped kitchen was a tin of instant coffee and a moldy piece of cheese. He doesn't even _drink_ coffee so the mystery of how it got there is beyond him. 

But he'd rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes, blinking at the dryness and made the coffee anyways, wincing as the harsh taste went down. 

And now here he is. Rambling through the aisles of Costco just past opening time, trying to will some life into his stiff legs and aching joints. 

"You'll sleep when you're dead, Todd," Jason mutters to himself, snorting humorously as he grabs a container of skim milk off the shelf. "Roll on snare." 

"You do know that you're talking to yourself, right?" 

Jason whirls around. Cassandra Cain -- or is it Wayne now? -- is leaning against a shopping cart just behind him, her left eyebrow raised and a teasing smile curling around her lips. 

"Shit, you really know how to sneak up on a guy, don't you?" 

Cassandra shrugs. "So I've been told." 

An understatement, he's sure. Jason rubs at the back of his neck. There's something about her -- he's never had any trouble with this one. They've run into each other once or twice. She's helped him out a fair few times, saved his ass last month when he was just shy of taking a bullet to the head but he still can't make heads or tails of her. She is not easy to rile, not like Bruce or Dick, nor does she approach him with the Replacement's half-hearted caution, a truce built mostly on poking fun at each other mercilessly. 

She is a quiet and reassuring presence but it would be impossible to mistake this for lenience, for softness. There is an edge about her that can't be shaken off or covered up. Shiva and Cain and whatever else there that's hers alone, what she's built and forged for herself -- it's a force to be reckoned with. He never forgets that she could kill him with her bare hands, as easy as one-two-three, back in the coffin for you, bucko. 

Jason casts around for something to say but ends up with nothing, feels small and exposed. He wasn't expecting to run into someone when he came out this morning. 

"What are you doing out this early?" 

"Tim's asleep and our kitchen is empty. I thought I'd get a head start," Cassandra answers and that's right, he'd heard that those two were roommates now. Two peas in a tiny, scary, ninja pod. 

"You should've kicked his ass outta bed and made him do it for you," Jason says, pushing his cart down the aisle a little bit to pick up some yogurt. Cassandra follows, pulling her cart up next to his, before making her way around to pick up some yogurt as well. 

"I like grocery shopping. It's good practice," she says. 

"Good practice doing what?"

"Reading. The labels," Cassandra says simply. 

Jason's mouth opens and closes a few times before his mind catches up with the rest of him and it all clicks together. _Fuck_. David Cain, what a bastard. 

"Barbara taught me how to read. Or, well. She tried, anyways. Lately, I've been working on it myself. Tim and Steph help. Tim has me reading…comics? I like the illustrations," she continues and Jason is hard-pressed to get her to stop because he's curious about this girl who is his sister on paper but nowhere else, this girl that he barely knows and can't figure out. All he knows is that every time he sees her, she looks at him like he's worth something and fuck if he knows when the last time someone did that was. 

Maybe never. 

That's a pretty lie you like to tell yourself, Jason's mind supplies, so he shakes it, pushes it down and away. "Babs used to tutor me in school some," he offers. 

"I know," Cassandra says. "She told me. Said you were her best student." 

Jason's face warms, something fond and familiar unfurling inside of him. So much of before is viewed through tinted glasses now, bitterness scraping its way through him and leaving behind ugliness on everything good left behind, tearing him asunder and leaving nothing but his rage, the parts of him that could be the Pit or could just be plain old bad-luck Jason Todd but Babs -- Babs is always the same. Babs is safe, still, always.

Jason clears his throat, swallows around a lump. "Yeah, well. Long time ago." 

They turn the corner into the cereal aisle but Cassandra stops her cart, reaches out and places a firm hand on his arm, let's him know that she could turn it into something else, something stronger. "What did you do last night?"

"Took down that drug ring that's been operating out of the docks for the past few years. I've been working that case for _months_ and everything finally came together, so I took care of it," Jason says, defensive on reflex. "Why?"

Cassandra turns to him, eyes bright and hard and there is no Cassandra or Cass here, only Black Bat. "Did you kill anyone?" 

Not exactly cereal aisle talk. Typical Bat behavior. Intense, emotional conversations at exactly the wrong place and time. They should patent it at this point. 

Jason meets her gaze dead on. "Yeah. I did." 

Put a bullet in the brain of the second-in-command, a good for nothing sack of shit with a rap sheet ten miles long with at least five sexual assault and rape charges on there. He can still taste the scent in the back of his mouth, copper bitter and sharp, can still see the blood spray across the gray, concrete floors. 

He's not sorry. 

"How many?"

"Just one. He had no respect for the sanctity of life, so I showed no respect for his. Period. You have any more questions or we gonna rumble over some Cheerios boxes?" 

She nods. "No need to fight." Cassandra leans over, picking up a box of müsli, dropping it in her cart. "You're already beat up enough." 

Jason barks out a laugh and it echoes in the still mostly-empty store. "You're not wrong." 

They split up for several minutes, going their own ways. He spots her halfway across the store, peering down at a crumpled sheet of paper that he guesses is a grocery list before moving on to pick up some paper supplies and before he knows it, he's weighted down with enough to last him for a good long while and all that's left to get is the most important thing of all. 

Jason steers himself towards the coffee and tea aisle and starts when he sees that Cassandra is already there. 

"You followin' me, sis?" 

She casts him a sideways glance, amused, before reaching up to pull down a box of Assam tea. "I was here first." 

"A tea drinker? Finally, and here I thought outside of Alfred, the rest of you were philistines." 

"Tim can't function without a full pot of coffee," Cassandra says, voicing dropping into a conspiratory tone, and on second thought, maybe that's where the tin of instant coffee came from. He's going to have a serious talk with Drake about boundaries and breaking into other people's safe houses when they're not around. 

"I have news for you, sis, neither can the boss man. I think he just injects espresso into his veins at this point. Between you and me, I'm pretty sure that's the real reason why he's such a paranoid ass." 

Cassandra makes a clucking noise. "That's not a nice thing to say," she says but she's laughing a bit and Jason chalks it up to a victory. 

"Well, I'm not a very nice man," Jason says, reaching for a box of Assam himself. 

"No," Cassandra says. "Get something different." 

"Why?"

"So I can come over and try it," she says, giving him a soft, small smile that Jason can't help but mirror, lips curling into a crooked grin. 

"All right," Jason says, reaching over to pick up a box from the shelf above. "Earl Grey it is."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] we sure know how to run free](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8911135) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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